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Naomi Klein and Madhumita Murgia shortlisted for the inaugural Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction
Naomi Klein and Madhumita Murgia have been shortlisted for the inaugural Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction, alongside Laura Cumming, Noreen Masud, Tiya Miles and Safiya Sinclair.
The shortlist represents writers from America (Miles), Canada (Klein) and Jamaica (Sinclair), with half the list from the UK (Cumming, Masud and Murgia). Penguin Random House also makes a strong showing, with its imprints making up half the shortlist for the £30,000 prize.
Judges said the 2024 shortlist “consists of works that either challenge prevalent ideas or reclaim narratives from our past, whilst breaking new ground in non-fiction writing”. Cumming’s Thunderclap: A Memoir of Art and Life and Sudden Death (Chatto & Windus) is described as “an inventive memoir and biography about art and love which bestows upon readers a vivid and transformative experience of painting, through the work of one little known artist” while Klein’s Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World (Allen Lane) “is an innovative, playful guide through the dangers of social media and the new world of online conspiracy theories”.
A Flat Place: A memoir (Hamish Hamilton) by Masud is “a haunting yet uplifting pilgrimage across Britain’s flatlands to alleviate childhood trauma, while boldly interrupting the traditions of ‘nature cure’” and Miles’ All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake (Profile) “is a genre-defining history of American enslavement which lovingly restores humanity to those left out of the archives”.
Murgia’s Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI (Picador) is billed as “an incisive, cutting-edge exploration through human stories of how AI is reshaping and infiltrating our lives” while Sinclair’s How to Say Babylon: A Jamaican Memoir (Fourth Estate) “is a fierce, yet lyrical account inside the closed world of a Rastafarian family that offers a personal reckoning with the legacy of empire”.
Professor Suzannah Lipscomb, chair of judges, said: “Our magnificent shortlist is made up of six powerful, impressive books that are characterised by the brilliance and beauty of their writing and which each offer a unique, original perspective. The readers of these books will never see the world – be it through art, history, landscape, politics, religion or technology – the same again.”
Professor Lipscomb is joined on the judging panel by fair fashion campaigner Venetia La Manna; academic, author and consultant Professor Nicola Rollock; biographer and journalist Anne Sebba; and author and 2018 winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction Kamila Shamsie.
The Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction is sponsored by the family tree company Findmypast. Books must be the work of a single author and be published in the UK between 1st April 2023 to 31st March 2024.
The winner will be announced on Thursday 13th June 2024 at the Women’s Prize Trust’s summer party in central London and will receive a cheque for £30,000 and a limited-edition artwork known as the "Charlotte", both gifted by the Charlotte Aitken Trust.
